


30 Day OTP Challenge: Please God, Don't Be Dead.

by andimstillyourfag



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:46:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andimstillyourfag/pseuds/andimstillyourfag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my take on ericandy's 30 Day OTP Challenge.</p><p>Sherlock is having trouble with a case, so John stays out of his way. But when Sherlock follows after him, John experiences a strange feeling...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Holding Hands: Grain of Doubt

The supposed suicide in a dressing room of the St Martin’s Theatre in the West End was turning out to be one of the hardest cases we’d ever had to solve. A show every night had corrupted the crime scene. Sherlock blamed Anderson. In the cab on the way home, Sherlock had rated it as a “two patch problem”, prompting a loud sigh from Lestrade and I. We both knew this would be a long night.

 

            We both stayed up late, Sherlock pacing the flat with his hands over his mouth in that praying position that he does when he’s thinking, and I writing a post about our last case, The Thames Valley Mystery. Only when I was going to change the title did I notice Sherlock standing over my shoulder reading every word.

 

            In my shattered state, I couldn’t put up with Sherlock’s nit picking of case details nor his constant walking back and forth, so I went to bed. Half an hour later, I woke up.

 

            Shouting. Frustrated shouting. He still hadn’t solved it then. I wasn’t sure if I could handle another three-patcher, so I just lay there hoping it would all calm down.

 

            Five minutes later, Sherlock burst into my room. I wasn’t sure if he just wasn’t thinking straight in one of those fits of anger he gets when he’s struggling with a case, but part of me hoped it was on purpose. He lay down next to me on the bed, still not acknowledging my presence.

 

In the faint light streaming through the door from the flat downstairs, I saw Sherlock reach his hand towards mine. I was wondering what his intentions were when he opened my hand with his gentle, slender fingers, and clasped my hand in his like a fragile butterfly.

 

            For a moment, we were connected, physically and mentally, and I felt something rush through me. It felt right, like we’d been lying to ourselves all this time by not doing it.

 

            “What am I missing John?” Sherlock broke the delicate silence with the sort of question I’d learnt to be rhetorical. “There must be one piece of evidence I’m missing, the misplaced thread in the tight cloth of the case. I will find it, if it takes all night.” That same obstinate determination I first saw in Sherlock during the face off in our first case, watching in terror, gun drawn.

 

            With that Sherlock bounced up, and swiftly moved out the door, slamming it behind him. I law awake, wondering what this peculiar encounter meant. About me, about Sherlock, about us as a pair. All those times I’d denied being in a couple. That little grain of doubt in the back of my mind, telling me there was more to us than just colleagues or friends. At the time it had just irritated me, but now it was as though Sherlock’s hand, that split second of bliss, had unravelled all I had previously thought.

 

            We didn’t talk about it, but there was something unspoken in the air between us from that night onward.

 

            John looked at his laptop. Sherlock’s name still hurt every time he saw it. That strange pain at the back of your throat.

 

            Please God, don’t be dead.


	2. Cuddling somewhere: Fit of Adrenaline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After finally solving the Case of the West End Suicide, John goes to his bed, only to be joined by a surprising guest...

Sherlock burst through the door of Flat 221b Baker Street in a fit of adrenaline and superiority. I followed, trailing behind as Sherlock strode up the stairs, clearing two at a time.

            “The actor playing the murderer killing the actress playing the victim. Brilliant.” I said, a bit out of it. The time in my room two days earlier still had me a little dazed.

            “Art imitates life, and so on.” Sherlock added. “It’s amazing what inspires people to kill. My first case, back at Uni involved a man who was killed for _not_ being a murderer.”

            “Fascinating.” I replied, only half listening, memories of Sherlock’s long, porcelain fingers tight around my own, illuminated in the light dancing through the doorway. I thought about how amazing the human mind is, capable of preserving a short few moments for days on end.

            It was late, 2 in the morning late to be precise, so I clambered up the stairs to my room, took off my jumper and trousers and limped into bed.

            To my great surprise, so did Sherlock, five minutes later.

            “Sherlock? What are you doing here?”

            “The other day, when I was lying here, I felt something. Something I’d never felt before, for any man or woman. And I think it was love. What I’m trying to say is that I love you John, or at least I think I do. I know I’m not great with feelings or emotions, but I get the feeling it’s mutual.”

            I was stunned, made speechless by Sherlock’s sudden show of affection. I muttered a vague sort of affirmative answer, idiotically nodding like a particularly loose bobble head.

            “Good.” And with that, Sherlock edged closer to me on the mattress, lay his head in the crook of my neck and his arm across my chest, and promptly fell asleep.

            I lay wake dumbfounded for about a few minutes, these precious encounters of the past few days replaying over and over in my head like a video tape or an episode of some 70s sitcom on ITV3. But memories can only keep you up for a while, and soon I joined Sherlock.

            John pulled Sherlock’s scarf close to his face and smelt it. It smelt like that night, it smelt like working on a case, it smelt like Sherlock.

            Please God, don’t be dead. 


	3. Watching something: Level of Arrogance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John asks Sherlock to watch his favourite TV show with him. It doesn't go as hoped, but exactly as expected. This was Sherlock, after all...

“Why are you making me watch this, John?”

            “Because I want you to see that you’re just like the main character in it,” I clarified. “House is the only person I know who has your level of arrogance and manages to be vaguely endearing as a human being. And anyway, this is what couples do.”

            “Fine, I’ll watch but I don’t understand why I should need to.” Within five minutes of the show happening, Sherlock said “Well she’s obviously got a tapeworm.”

            “Sherlock, how on earth could you possibly know that?” I shouted at him.

            “It’s all in the symptoms; I don’t have an extensive knowledge of medicine, but I think I can recognise a Grand Mal seizure, which can be caused by tapeworms dying and causing swelling, in this case in the patient’s brain. But how did the tapeworm end up there in the first place? Well the eggs may pass into the blood and from there travel to any part of the body. So in conclusion, the patient ate some meat, pork I’d suggest, seeing as she’s not really Jewish at all, and through that the worm entered her system. Correct?”

            “How do you do that?” I asked in astonishment.

            “I’ll assume I was correct then.”

            After about 15 minutes of constant commentary and general smug prattishness from Sherlock, I turned it off and stormed out of the room in a bit of a bad mood. Not that Sherlock noticed, because he’s Sherlock Holmes and other human’s feelings are of no importance to him.

            John sat back in his chair. He didn’t care how much it hurt, he would keep writing about Sherlock. He needed to remember him always. The good, the bad, the arrogant.

            And by God, could he be arrogant. And John loved him for it.

            Please God, don’t be dead.


	4. On a Date: Pools of Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock takes John on their first proper date to Angelo's restaurant, and John discovers more about Sherlock and their relationship...

Sherlock took his arm off my waist to open the door for me, and as we walked in Angelo, smile on his face, approached us with menus, and hugged Sherlock and I.

            This threw me slightly, we’d been here before but never had Angelo hugged me, I was just Sherlock’s blogger and room-mate.

            “Candle for the happy couple?”

            I was about to blurt out my usual “We are not a couple” business, when I stopped myself. We were a couple, weren’t we. Me and Sherlock, a couple. The newspapers would light up, of course, “EXCLUSIVE: Johnlock official!” on the front cover of the Sun by the end of the week.

            As I watched Angelo place a lit candle in the middle of the table and I watched the flame flicker underneath Sherlock’s face, a thought occurred to me.

            “Sherlock, how many people did you tell about us?”

            “Only Angelo, Lestrade and Mycroft.” He replied snappily, yet relaxed.

            “And?”

            “My blog.”

            “SHERLO...” I started to yell, when I felt Sherlock’s lips close on mine. We kissed for what seemed like hours, and finally we separated.

            I ordered what I wanted, and I didn’t even blink when Angelo walked away without taking Sherlock’s order. I knew him too well to expect him to eat with me on our first proper date.

            As I tucked into my pasta, I noticed Sherlock staring at me, and it was only then that I noticed his eyes. You couldn’t really determine one particular colour in them, like little pools of deep blue, patches of green like pondweed, golden spots speckled around the iris like goldfish swimming around. They had a delicate, almost ethereal quality to them, yet this strange intensity, and the sense that these were the eyes of a lonely soul, a lonely heart. I could only hope that he wouldn’t be lonely any longer.

John picked up the picture of Sherlock he kept on his bedside table and stared into those eyes. Even in the 2D photograph, there was a real depth to them that he’d never seen before.

            Just over 3 years since he first looked in those eyes and he still got that chill that whistled its way down his backbone, those pupils boring down into his heart and his brain, seeing everything, every secret, every fear. Even in this photo, lifeless as they were last he saw them, crouched over Sherlock on the pavement praying to a god he didn’t even believe in. He could only believe in one thing, he could only believe in Sherlock.

            Please God, don’t be dead.


	5. Kissing: Rush of Ecstasy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John thinks back to his date with Sherlock, before it dregs something up from the deepest of his memories...

Sherlock had once again fallen asleep before me, and I lay awake thinking, like most nights. I stared across the bed at Sherlock. My eyes drifted from his thin face and sharp cheekbones down to his slender but fit chest and prominent shoulder blades, and then his long, lean legs stretching down the bed out of his boxerbriefs, and then back up at his face. I stared at his long, full lips, and his pronounced Cupid’s bow, and started thinking about our kiss in the restaurant.

            His plump, firm lips on mine, slight pressure, hand on my chest. It was our first kiss beyond a peck and I was shocked at first, but soon a rush of ecstasy ran through my blood and the endorphins hit my brain. Suddenly the world around faded out, Angelo, the restaurant, London. Suddenly everything was Sherlock; everything was us together, interlocked and intertwined.

            Sherlock’s lips tasted different to anything I’d tasted before, a strange mixture of Earl Grey tea, the overlying scent of London and something else - was that food? Chemicals?! -  Whatever it was, it felt right. There was a hint of cigarettes, but I wasn’t going to pick up on that. Not tonight. Tonight was about him and I, finally together, united. I belonged with Sherlock, and we belonged together.

John put closed his laptop and put it down on his bedside table. He looked down the small single bed in the cramped little flat the Armed Forces had provided him with in the months after Sherlock fell. He’d been living here for six months now but it still didn’t feel like home. It felt lonely in this single bed, no Sherlock lying asleep next to him, curled into a ball with covers pulled up.

            A few days after the fall, John woke up alone and walked out into the flat. He had stared at the place. He had been in 221b Baker Street for over a year, and he’d never felt so lonely before. He walked across to his desk, unlocked his drawer and pulled out his gun.

            Life wouldn’t be worth living without Sherlock. John had the gun raised to his temple, and as a tear rolled down his cheek he readied himself to pull the trigger when the door opened and Greg ran over to him, screaming for him to stop and put the gun down. Nights like this John wished he hadn’t.

            Please God, don’t be dead.


End file.
